24 April 2012 1:36 PM

Apocalypse deferred

The great grand-daddy of the man-made global warming scam, the fifth horseman of the eco-apocalypse James Lovelock, has now recanted. Well, sort of. Don’t get too excited.

Lovelock now admits to having been ‘alarmist’ about climate change, and says other fanatics environmental commentators such as Al Gore were too alarmist as well.

You don’t say.

It’s only taken a quarter of a century. During that time, Professor Lovelock was the guru of man-made global warming theory. More than that, he was the prophet of a cult which turned the earth into a kind of god -- or more specifically a goddess called Gaia, investing it with anthropomorphic characteristics while his disciples demonised the human race itself as the destroyers of the planet.

Lovelock made one chilling prediction of planetary doom after another. In 2006, he warned that the earth might soon pass

‘“into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years....as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics. Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert... Before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”’

‘“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.

‘“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said. “The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.’

Indeed, there is no question about it. Not being able to tell what the climate is actually doing, let alone what it will do in the future, is in essence what climate sceptics have been saying consistently for the past 25 years or so. And so presumably we should now count Lovelock as one of their number? Er, not exactly:

‘Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.”’

Good Lord, perish the thought! ‘Climate change deniers’ are nasty, vicious, imbecilic, rapacious neo-Nazis, aren’t they? No, Lovelock’s latest position is... ah, as sophisticated and, um, nuanced as we would expect from someone with such a solid and distinguished scientific track record:

‘He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought. “We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.’

Of course! Even though

“we don’t know what the climate is doing”

and

“there’s nothing much really happening yet”

and

“it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising”

--- in other words, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the theory of man-made global warming, its baleful effects have only

“been deferred a bit”.

Isn’t the environmental movement wonderful? Even when they admit they’re totally wrong, they still insist they were right all along.

Professor Lovelock is a Fellow of the Royal Society. Some years back that august body, the embodiment of the scientific establishment and the custodians of scientific integrity, told us that on man-made global warming ‘the science is settled’. What will the Society now be saying to Professor Lovelock FRS, or he to it?

‘David Cameron is no longer making a pro-environmental oration on Thursday during a gathering of 23 energy ministers from around the world’

because according to Number 10:

‘...while Cameron may have mulled a set-piece speech it was only ever considered’ (hat tip: Benny Peiser).

Ah. Might the Prime Minister finally have detected that the winds of climate change are being blown somewhat off course – and the reputations of all who promoted this, the greatest anti-scientific scam of all time, now risk being blown away with it?

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There are three possibilities:

(1) Climate change does not happen
(2) Climate change does happen, but does not have a major effect
(3) Climate change does happen, with the predicted effect

Because we don't know what is happening there is a choice. Do we not do anything at all and hope nothing happens, with the risk that if it does, we've ensured our own fate, or do we start reducing our emissions and damage to the environment in the knowledge that if it does happen we've done all we could have done to prevent it, and if it doesn't happen we've only made the ecosystem healthier?

It's interesting to contrast the behaviour of CERN's physicists, when they believed that they had observed neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light, with the behaviour of the proponents of AGW.

CERN's physicists were as certain as they could possibly be that the results of their experiment were in some way flawed but, as they could not find their error, they went ahead and published. Of course, an error was found later on and the results were modified. (That's only after the new evidence came to light.)

The AGW scientists - more correctly, perhaps to say those that argue on their behalf - however, seem not to act in this scientifically-preferable manner. Rather, there are discussions about hiding inconveniences such as the mediaeval warming.

(Shame that Surrey University's Jim Al-Khalili didn't have to eat his boxer shorts!)

If this is true - "her opening gambit was that she had no special qualifications to speak on the topics in her book; her degree, she said, was in English; she simply, as a plain person, followed where the logic took her" - then to follow where logic ought to take her, Melanie Phillips should cease the pretence that she is qualified to judge climate science, though perfectly at liberty to do her bit to keep the politics honest.

( Michael Williamson. It looks very much as if you haven't bothered to try to read any of the science as opposed to the polemics.)

The question Andy asked is precise enough to make the charge of "censorship" or "thought control" utter nonsense. It is disappointing that nobody seems to have understood the question well enough to make a serious attempt at answering it. Bruce gave the best response and most courteous. I think Andy answered him adequately, altho Bruce may well disagree.

KG
Oh dear! And I tried my best to be clear, even at the risk of "pomposity". I will try one more time, although I can't promise to use words of only one syllable as you seem to want.

"Translate science into political action" is what BOTH sides are trying to do.

And, oh dear, you really don't understand how science works. I am reluctant to spoil your romantic image of lone mavericks challenging the establishment. Can I recommend Phillip Kitcher's book "The Advancement of Science" for an exhaustive (and exhausting) description. As Newton acknowledged, he "stood on the shoulders of Giants." In plain English, science produces a gradual growth in knowledge - which would be impossible without a consensus on at least some of it (subject to revision).

"Censorship and thought control..." Now you're just being silly. You can think what you want. You can say what you want. You do not pretend (I assume) to be an authority. Cetainly no-one would take you as such. Melanie Phillips does pretend and IS taken as such.

Your are proud of your two points.

The first, as I said, is precisely the same point I and Ewan have made. Your fearless reporter has shown that the IPCC's two roles (summarising the science and advising governments) do not belong in one outfit. Its political role has corrupted its scientific role. I trust your fearless reporter will do a similar job for the independent reasearch institutes funded by interested corporations.

Your second point is simply wrong. I will end with Melanie Phillips' conclusion, which extrapolates somewhat extravagantly from Mr. Lovelock:

"Ah. Might the Prime Minister finally have detected that the winds of climate change are being blown somewhat off course – and the reputations of all who promoted this, the greatest anti-scientific scam of all time, now risk being blown away with it?
Too late. The planet won't fry, but the warmists are toast."

Who will be prosecuted for this blatant fraud - not Al Gore and my guess is not anyone at all. Well they should and he should hand back the Nobel Prize...instead he should get an award for the biggest con man and spend time in jail.
He has been awfully quiet since he was chased from a book store last year by angry people who had finally woken up to the fact that they had been lied to for decades.

Surely, if there are signs that catastrophic global warming may not happen after all, this is cause for optimism. Yet one has the distinct impression that the AGW prophets are disappointed that the longed for punishment of the shallow consumer capitalist world may not take place.

Andy gives the activist game away: 'translation of science into political action'. No wonder he and his ilk are so keen on consensus. Each 'iteration' of science (as he rather pompously puts it) may well lead to further questions but consensus is about comfortable conformity not scientific exploration. As I have already said, consensus is for politicians. It is interesting that AGW enthusiasts are now insisting that people without the relevant scientific training have no right to so much as express an opinion on the subject of global warming/climate change. Censorship and thought control are in the DNA of the left (or am I not allowed to use that metaphor without a PhD in genetics?)

Anyway, Andy has chosen to dodge the points I made in my previous post (ducking both with vague generalisations) so here they are again (hopefully I am making myself clear this time).

1. Investigative journalist Donna Laframboise made a careful expose of the operations of the IPCC and found that within that organisation there are many people not qualified in Climate Science who are able to wield great influence. The IPCC is not the august body it seems to be. Those who insist that we respect this organisation should read her study.

2. Regardless of what Melanie Phillips' track record is on this issue, in her 'Apocalypse Deferred' blog she is writing about James Lovelock slowly shifting ground. This is based upon a reading of his own statements. Comments from the likes of Andy represent a more general attack on Phillips rather than a valid criticism of what she actually said. As such they are part of the general war on AGW dissenters.

A prudent silence prevails. I should say, however, that it hasn't always. Melanie Phillips has indeed been quite up-front about her credentials. I don't know why it slipped my mind. In her marketing spiel, touring the US to promote her book (which anyone who takes her seriously should read), her opening gambit was that she had no special qualifications to speak on the topics in her book; her degree, she said, was in English; she simply, as a plain person, followed where the logic took her. Melanie Phillips can of course correct me if my memory is playing tricks. In other words, as I and others have said, her credentials to judge the science of climate change (and so much else besides!) are non-existent. She has none. This is excusable in a private person. We are all lay people in most matters. But we do not all take money to masquerade as experts to influence opinion in subjects we are untrained to assess. We do not all join in the "steady drip drip of propaganda" that corrupts and poisons the dissemination of information to the public. The health of a democracy depends on free access to information, not the freedom for corporate employees to spread disinformation in the service of profit.

Comments from those agreeing with AGW: rational, balanced, well informed, coherent.
From the deniers: dogmatic, ill informed, especially about science, gratuitously unpleasant, politically motivated and generally ignorant.
I know who I would rather agree with, and that is with the majority of climate scientists.

Not sure the ecofascists are "toast". They are still getting billions out of windmill subsidies. They still control most of the medai and all of the government broadcasting propagandaist. Alarmist quango are still getting billion (NERC one nobody has ever heard of, gets £450m annually alone). The pensioners who died of fuel poverty (25,000 a year) are still dead. The industries that suffered are still gone, either inn banjruptcy or to India. We are still inm a recession deliberately caused by ecofascist politicians like Cameron and they are still in power.

In the best Orwellian tradition we will simply see the BBC switch to some new fraud to scare us into obedience and catastrophic warming will become something not mentioned. After all the Green lobby have previously produced literally hundreds of scare stories, from DDTto rising sea levels to peak oil/gas/niobium/tin in the next few years, annually for 40 years. They have stolen trillions inntotal and killed hundreds of millions and still get away with it.

lemon
"There is no evidence..." What, none? I'll be generous: false, but intended only as a rhetorical flourish. Ditto your "blast furnace".

EJ
Hard, I know, but you do need scientific training to judge whether scientific methods are correctly applied. Or, tell me, what would convince you personally of the existence of up quarks, their charge, spin or colour?

The 97% don't share etc. Rhetorical flourish, I presume?

Bruce of Newcastle
Ewan and Luis Perriere take up your medical analogy (which is a good one). If you were diagnosed with cancer would you reject the recommended treatment because before the cancer killed you a maverick might come up with proof the treatment doesn't work? Luis says he would, because he knows the doctors are all quacks (except the maverick? but then how would he know? what if the maverick were a Dr. Wakefield, expert on MMR?) Or, if you read up about your cancer (on the internet) and found that some oncologists were accused of incompetence or dishonesty, and that some oncologists are sceptical of the treatment, and that some non-oncologists insist all the evidence for the treatment is false, a conspiracy against the (lets assume $trn business of) homeopathy (but, oops, the non-oncologists are paid by the homeopathy business)...Who to believe! It's a dilemma!

Your thirty years, if in a relevant field (or to an extent even if not), I would say qualifies you to take part in the scientific debate i.e. you are not a lay person.

It is good that sceptical scientists feel able to resist the pressure to conform.

KG
Insulting and condescending. Well done.

Your first point is good - which may be why it's consistent with what I and Ewan have said. - How do we arrange things so the translation of science into political action is open, honest, rational, and democratic? Both sides have disgraced themselves.

Your second not so good. Any science is iterative. Each iteration ends with consensus and unanswered questions. And so it goes on.

I suspect you know that Melanie Phillips' piece is not an isolated intervention. She most certainly does need scientific qualifications if her interventions are to be conscientious.

It is notable that I have made no claim to be qualified to judge on the science, yet everyone else has simply assumed they are without answering my question how as lay people they come to be so. The failure to answer is neither here nor there, except for Melanie Phillips. Baldwin's jibe has been quoted before. It still applies.

I do wish that the lazy supporters of the AGW theory (who are so ready to troll their way around the blogs telling us about 'the majority of scientific experts') would take the time and trouble to read investigative journalist Donna Laframboise careful expose of the operations of the IPCC. It seems that within that organisation there are many people not qualified in Climate Science who are able to wield great influence. As for 'consensus' (!) - that word belongs in the world of politics. Science is about questioning, enquiry, experiment and (above all) the TESTING of theories, not their comfortable acceptance in a cosy consensus.

Melanie Phillips' piece is essentially a comparison between what James Lovelock said in the past and what he now says on the issue of global warming/climate change. She is showing us that his statements indicate that doubts are starting to creep in. She does not require special scientific expertise or qualifications to do that and nor does anyone else.

990 doctors vs. 10 and your own judgment.
Let’s say you feel great but someone comes and tells you have fever and that means you have a cancer. When you ask to see the thermometer they hide it and say computers are always right and you don’t have to make question and that other 989 docs back the diagnostic. You find 10 other ones that tell you: you feel ok? No temperature? No cancer! So you don’t need much to know you want to be away away from the 990 and their operation room.

Michael Williamson.
You have missed the point of my comment and of Andy's long spiel to which it was a footnote: as a layperson, one not qualified to chunter, how am I, or you, or Melanie Phillips, to decide who to believe in questions of science? I suggest that Andy is right that we have to trust (however unwillingly) the consensus among the scientists. This should not be controversial: we do it all the time. It is one of the foundations of our advanced civilisation. It is also troubling. As Andy has said, how do we keep the science honest and how do we ensure the political debate about it is rational and democratic? Environmentalists may be a menace, but, as lead petrol, tobacco etc. etc. demonstrate, the corporate sector can be a bigger one. (And, yes, corporate capitalism is another foundation of our advanced civilisation.) The question remains, how Melanie Phillips, and perhaps you, feel able to second guess the scientific consensus. It is as if you were to condescend to put the particle physicists right about quantum chromodynamics, or whatever. - "There is no evidence establishes evolution by natural selection - Intelligent Design is a better founded explanation for the diversity of species." "There is no evidence of a causal link between smoking and cancer." And so it goes on. There is certainly a debate to be had, but it should be an informed debate. Melanie Phillips should explain how she is able to dismiss the scientific consensus.

''We don't know what the climate is doing..'"........."Nothing's happening"....but when it does happen it will be all your fault.

Meanwhile, after my breakfast I think I'll have a nice shower, and then do a bit gardening while I get on with my life in full knowledge that these blokes haven't got a clue what they are talking about yet are still being listened to by Idjuts.

"I suspect you have as much right to chunter on about quantum chromodynamics as I - none at all. You are of course free to chunter all you like, but I doubt even you would take your chunterings to be in any way authoritative.".

But that's exactly what you've done. You are saying you are not qualified to "chunter" about global warming but you obviously believe it is happening - do you know something we don't?

Thirty years ago most medical scientists would have told you that ulcers were caused by stress, and would feed you antacids. One guy said it was due to a bacterium. He was badly flamed for this view at the time. In the end he was forced to prove his own hypothesis by drinking a swig of the bacteria, give himself gastritis, then cure it with an antibiotic. Dr Barry Marshall won the Nobel for this. The market for quack ulcer cures disappeared almost overnight.

Catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming is similar. But the money is much much larger than the billion dollar antacid market. So those on grants have a powerful incentive not to see what the data says. And I (a scientist of 30 yers standing) say the data shows that the IPCC hypothesis of high CO2 sensitivity does not fit it, but the low CO2 sensitivity/solar magnetic hypothesis does fit the data. Scientists cannot do more than point this out - and increasingly brave scientists are overcoming their fears of retribution and are speaking out.

Remember, science and the scientific method is simple a method of inquiry based on empirical observations. Thus one does not need to be a climate scientist to determine if the scientific method is be used correctly.

As to which scientist one should trust, see if the are behaving like a scientist and archiving their data and methods so others can replicate their work.

If, as in the case of the 97% crowd, they don't share their data and hide behind foia and other ways to avoid having their work reviewed, that should tell a layman plenty!

Andy - There is no evidence that human activity that causes CO2 causes global warming or any other climatic factor.
CO2 release has gone up. Temps have not gone up as much as Hanson has falsified them and Mann has used his proxies when it suited him so that it would seem to buffies like you that we are living in a blast furnace, which we are clearly not.

I know this is just entertainment. The purpose is to attract readers by whatever means. So I'm being over-earnest in responding. But what is the genre? We have here a "commentator", a teller of truth to a degenerate age. In this genre, what is said has to sound authoritative. And the readers certainly seem to take it as such. Yet what is the script? Precisely the one concocted by the PR companies employed by the energy and extractive industries (and I mean precisely). Given this coincidence, and the fact that readers, as well as the author, it appears, take what is said here seriously, it is all the more important that our author present her credentials. What is her authority for what she says? Pornography always in time corrupts the morals of those exposed to it. Propaganda always in time subverts public discourse. How are we to trust that our author is not simply contributing to the steady drip drip of propaganda if she will not tell us how she is qualified to pontificate?

the global warming theory is just a scam by scientists desperate for grants why can they not come clean and admit they were wrong there are enough problems in this country without going overboard with false data the government are also foolish for listening to them

I suspect you have as much right to chunter on about quantum chromodynamics as I - none at all. You are of course free to chunter all you like, but I doubt even you would take your chunterings to be in any way authoritative.

On the relative size of the consensus v. sceptics v. deniers, I think you may have allowed your bias to select your evidence for you. Take a little more time to survey the academic literature.

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